The hospital also awakened the youth of OlKalou to what life can be if one had an education. The people we saw working at the hospital all looked “successful”. They were professionals with jobs and money. It started dawning on us that it must be the education they received, that “rescued” them from their rural villages and hometowns, now qualifying them to be in charge of our health, with the government paying them every month.
That was a huge motivator for most of us. Education was our only ticket out of OlKalou, taking us to jobs anywhere in the country, just like it did for these ‘strangers” who were now managing the most important facility in our hometown and getting paid to do it.
You could tell the locals respected the hospital employees. Anybody with a white lab coat was addressed as Doctor (Dagitari or Rigitari) regardless of their position at the hospital. They all looked clean, happy and prosperous.
